May 30 2008
Lock step: Part I
Part 1 of 2
There was a memorable scene in Dead Poet’s Society when Robin William’s character asked his impressionable young students to walk around an open cobblestone courtyard in whatever manner suited them. After one or two brief roundabouts, he exclaimed, “There it is!” Naturally, without thinking, a group of his students started walking together, and then almost immediately thereafter, they began taking steps in unison. Arms, legs and feet swung and thudded against the cobblestones in lock step.
What was Robin William’s character, Mr. Keating, point in this quirky exercise? Conformity. It’s an old, well-trodden topic, but it’s one not many people are talking about lately.
What sparked this topic was a conversation I had the other day. In that conversation, a friend of mine said that the reason for all the tantrums at and around us since the dawn of the millennium is for the simple reason that we don’t conform. We don’t fit into pre-defined categories and modes of behavior and beliefs that are acceptable to the “collective”.
In my social and work environment, there is a certain amount of pressure to move along with the flow. Go along to get along, as the saying goes. One can be different as long as that difference is only topical, only surface deep. You can be “different” with the application or insertion of adventurous piercings, tattoos and have metal stainless-steel spikes coming out of your earlobes. But believe the wrong thing, state the obvious, or refuse to engage in the belittling slam dance that passes for conversation nowadays and you can find yourself in a puddle of kim-chi.
If modern social interaction were as simple as identifying concrete “do’s” and “don’ts” in any given setting, much like what was once known as social etiquette, it would be a rather simple matter of memorizing these lists of rules and adjust yourself accordingly. Then contemporary social interplay would be cake, right?
… ah, no. Not cake. Unfortunately, it ain’t even frosting.
The dynamic of many groups– social, business or otherwise– is that it is a free-floating consensus. Not quite like a beehive mentality, but darn close. It’s kind of like having a schizophrenic parent with an imperial ego asking you to push peas around the living room with the tip of your nose. Not satisfied with that approach, the schizoid parent then asks you to push walnuts, and then maybe apricots, and then– wait a minute, why push things at all? Pulling a tether with the apricot attached at one end and you on the other and with a piece of thread between your clenched teeth is much more appealing… Anyway, you get the idea.
In all these machinations, the wit and wisdom of the group must never be questioned. Unfortunately for me and others of my ilk, I like to go left when others want to go right. Part of it, I suppose, is me being a contrarian (i.e. doing it out of sheer bloodymindedness), but the larger part of it, I think (and I hope), is that I couldn’t conform even if I wanted to. And when I was younger, boy howdy, did I want to. A natural born orange in a basket full of apples, you might say, is not very pleasant at times.
When people see that I, and others like myself, don’t conform and have no intention of conforming to the beliefs of the group, there are tantrums. I’ve had it happen on the whole Global Warming shtick. I’ve had it happen on my position favoring gay marriage and gay rights. These tantrums take on many forms, but one of the more frequent reactions I receive is where they would accuse me of being a) arrogant and unwilling to listen b) uncompassionate and c) plain stupid. All this tend to be delivered in acerbic sarcasm and mockery.
I am, of course, not suggesting that people huff and puff whenever they interact with me all the time. I’m simply illustrating a pattern of behavior toward those who do not conform to the shifting beliefs of the collective group. One can be a “Winner” one minute, and a “Loser” in the next. In favor one day, out of favor the next, and there is no seeming rhyme or reason for it. The group just somehow decides it will forevermore have tea rather than coffee in the morning, and all the lemmings run out to have an English Breakfast tea with a dash of honey.
For those still having coffee, well, they just can’t quite keep up, can they? Didn’t you know that today Oceania is the enemy?
Read further in Part II